Air-Powered: Intention, Attention or Breathing and Soaring

"love is life force"
-June Jordan "children's literature and the creative imagination"



(pictured: Quirky Black Bird World)

Sharing a meal with me in Durham, sister-comrade, qbg farmer, poet, pickler, anthropologist dancer dreamer Zachari shared a simple and profound insight that has been rocking my world and catching my breath. While we were talking about how crucial and scary it is to risk everything and do what we are born to do when internalized capitalism teaches us to do only what we can be PAID to do, Zachari taught me about how large birds coast on air by paying close attention to the airstream that supports them. That airstream might not be headed towards the particular tree, or small animal that they would want to get to...but if they miscalculate and get of course they will fall...air will not continue to lift them if they are not fully present to their context, their environment, the specific moment of air interplay that provides them with this priceless miraculous moment of flight, height, and perspective, when we can see our relationship to the world and be thrilled and affirmed by it.

I am excited for Zachari to create an eco-friendly choreopoem performance patch to sew on your jeans (Zachari IS just that practical and just that creative) that spreads this lesson far and wide because that dance of what looks like effortless flying makes us all into large birds who need to stay in close touch with the air that supports us, the clarity that purpose, ancestors, divinity, love are like air...all around us and taking us where we didn't imagine we needed to go.

We also agreed that it is crucial for us to do what we were born to do because by suppressing our purpose in favor of consumption, security and conformity human beings have gotten completely out of alignment with our environment, this planet, and that just like jobs, academic programs and non-profit industrial complex ventures that are not aligned with our purpose can make our lives feel unlivable everyday...we are collectively on the verge of making the planet unlivable for ourselves. (The planet herself can regenerate...but she also can will and must shed us like a mangy boa if we don't get in alignment with the love energy that brings life into being.)

Living my purpose is how I shower my community (YOU!!!) with love and how I show my ancestors infinite praise. It's how I move towards alignment with the planet. Purpose IS love, or as June Jordan says "love is life force." In purpose mode I am in flight, closely attuned to my purpose, the whispers of my ancestors, the needs of my communities, guided, lifted, free and on course. And when I get off purpose I fall and fall and fall, flap and struggle and run directly into the tree I thought I could force life to lead me to land on.

Right now I feel like I am experiencing the miracle of soaring. Checking in moment to moment with my spiritual airstream lifted by the affirmation of my faith in my community and my ancestors who are saying yes this is exactly where you need to be now, and now here and now here and I am not even concerned about where I will ultimately end up, I am fully in love and faith with the air-carried messages that revise my intentions and clarify my purpose more and more every day.

Maybe this is because this year I have been prioritizing spending time with people who I love (like Zachari!), because I listened to my body when it said I needed to dance and do yoga everyday...no matter the weather, my travel schedule (thank goodness for dance dvds and yoga on netflix!!). Maybe it is because my ancestors wanted me to start this year with the knowledge of what it feels like to soar so that if and when I fall in the future I will still have the memory and knowledge that it is possible to soar, that full purposeful living is possible even though it takes so much faith to let go of the faulty structures we air trained to depend on purpose is as simple as breathing.

Living in the breath of my ancestors and the waiting affirmation of the YES you will say to yourself.

Ashe,
QBG Lex

P.S. Speaking of alignment save the dates June 23-26 to converge in Detroit, MI for the Allied Media Conference where QBGs Moya, Julia, Lex, Zachari, are making space for the miraculous manifestation of our collective purpose!!!!

P.P.S. And find out how you can become an Eternal Summerian and get the new materials to bring the insights of the MotherOurselves Bootcamp to your community or your ownself!